I was once told that over 300 people a year are killed by swinging doors. I initially thought of the classic swinging doors from saloons in western movies, but I think it was more to do with normal doors opening and cracking people in the head.

Doors can also be fatal to cyclists, and this campaign is trying to raise money in Chicago to inform motorists of the dangers their doors pose to cyclists.

I haven’t yet been “car doored” so I hope that this message rings out loud and clear to the motorists of the world. Look behind you before you open your door. PLEASE!

I ask myself this question, but not in relation to the credit crunch, but how bad the environmental crisis will have to become before newspapers will devote as many column inches to the environment as they do to the economy. A selection of today’s front pages from Newseum.

Without the environment there will be no economy, so why don’t the newspapers run stories on the environmental crisis? Is it to do with basic human psychology and our inability to imagine the future – whether it be good or bad? Are we that selfish and focused on short-term goals?

Noisy Decent Graphics has created a spoof edition of The Economist to the examples above (language warning for sensitive folk).

This book is in the collection at the Department of Typography in Reading. Today I got to touch it, leaf through it, hold it, and generally caress the lovely goodness of a book printed about 200 years before white fellas came to Australia. Next week I get to hold a volume of the Book of Kells, I am not kidding.

A description of the Palatino book: Known in his time as the “calligrapher’s calligrapher,&quot; Palatino first published this work in 1540 under the title Libro Nuovo. Especially noted for its samples of chancery scripts, the work includes examples of non-western scripts, as well as hieroglyphs and cipher alphabets.

It’s the actual replica made on the Stephen Fry documentary from the BBC (you can watch it at the link). I am hoping it will be staying at the university and I will get to use it. We will get to do some letterpress work but perhaps not on this lovely machine. I am so excited!

I like the idea of the dashboard as a way of retrieving information with a quick glance. The Indianopolis Museum of Art has a dashboard which summarises some key figures about the museum. I think it would be more effective for the consumer if it had some comparisons.

The kw useage for example could be compared to other museums, or like the Australian electricity bills, to what they used this time last year. Comparing seems to be a very natural human desire (I am constantly doing it here in my new digs), so it may also help with communication.

Hi

This blog will change focus a little from September 2008 as I will be studying a Master of Information Design at Reading University. Thanks to all my students past and present from Billy Blue College of Design for a wonderful couple of years; please stay in touch.